fraid of me, as mine own state is not only ruined, but
my kind friends and faithful servants are like to die in prison because
I cannot help myself with mine own. Now I do not only feel the
intolerable weight of your majesty's indignation, and am subject to
their wicked information that first envied me for my happiness in your
favor and now hate me out of custom; but, as if I were thrown into a
corner like a dead carcase, I am gnawed on and torn by the vilest and
basest creatures upon earth. The tavern-haunter speaks of me what he
lists. Already they print me and make me speak to the world, and shortly
they will play me in what forms they list upon the stage. The least of
these is a thousand times worse than death. But this is not the worst of
my destiny; for your majesty, that hath mercy for all the world but me,
that hath protected from scorn and infamy all to whom you once vowed
favor but Essex, and never repented you of any gracious assurance you
had given till now; your majesty, I say, hath now, in this eighth month
of my close imprisonment (as if you thought my infirmities, beggary and
infamy, too little punishment for me), rejected my letters, refused to
hear of me, which to traitors you never did. What therefore remaineth
for me? Only this, to beseech your majesty on the knees of my heart, to
conclude my punishment, my misery and my life together; that I may go to
my Saviour, who hath paid himself a ransom for me, and whom, methinks, I
still hear calling me out of this unkind world, in which I have lived
too long, and once thought myself too happy.

"From your majesty's humblest servant,

"ESSEX."

* * * * *

At length, the queen prepared to make an end of this lingering business;
the earl's entreaties that it might not be made a Star-chamber matter
were listened to, and eighteen commissioners were selected out of the
privy-council, to discuss his conduct, hear his accusation and defence,
and finally pronounce upon him such a _censure_, for it was not to be
called a _sentence_, as they should see fit. The crown lawyers,--amongst
whom Francis Bacon chose to take his place, though the queen had offered
to excuse his attendance on account of the ties of gratitude which ought
to have attached him to Essex,--spoke one after another in aggravation
of his offence; and some of them, as the attorney-general (Coke), with
great virulence of language. Next came the prisoner's defence, which